Today, most upright household refrigerators, including freezing sections thereof, and upright household freezers have doors that are hinged along one side edge for swinging movement on a vertical axis between open and closed positions. Such refrigerators usually are equipped with magnetic means for retaining their doors in closed position. Such doors can readily be opened simply by exerting a pull thereon sufficient to overcome the small retaining force of the magnetic means.
Refrigerator doors that are retained in their closed position only by magnets, as is almost entirely the case with present day household refrigerators, are opened easily by very small children and sometimes even by the pet animals which frequently accompany children. This not only creates a hazardous situation for the child, by reason of his (the term is used herein to include both genders) eating food which might be unhealthy for him and very cold air flowing out over him, but also most likely will result in an unsanitary condition by contamination of the stored food by the child's hands which, as any parent well knows, are usually dirty, in fact sometimes grimy. Furthermore, the pet animals which frequently accompany small children enhance the probability of food contamination by such animals' well-known propensity for eating anything in sight and their ability to climb into a refrigerator to do so.
In addition to the foregoing hazards, the early access to household refrigerator by small children has resulted in a much greater danger, that is, the danger of injury or disfigurement resulting from broken glass or exploding carbonated beverage bottles. In fact, there are recorded instances of fatal injuries to children resulting from their easy access to a household refrigerator.
The opening of a refrigerator door by a small child or a household pet not only creates a hazardous situation, and one which may result in food contamination, but also one which may lead to energy wastage. A small child is of insufficient maturity to appreciate that energy should not be wasted and, hence, once he opens the door, in all probability will leave it open for a long period of time and, thus, waste energy. In this connection, it will be appreciated that when a refrigerator door has been open long enough, all of the cold air in the refrigerator will flow out and be replaced with air of room temperature. Once the door is closed, considerable energy must be expended to lower the interior temperature of the refrigerator back down to normal.
It also will be appreciated that a small child, unappreciative of the fact that most food stored in a refrigerator will spoil rather rapidly at room temperature, frequently will neglect to close a refrigerator door, once opened by his exploratory hands as a result of his insatiable curiosity and sometimes insatiable appetite, and thus loss of perishable food will occur. A modern upright household freezer can, and often does, store frozen food having a value of at least one thousand dollars ($1,000). A loss of that magnitude is disastrous for many households.
Further, refrigerator doors usually have a resilient compressible sealing gasket interposed between their inner marginal periphery and the outer marginal periphery of the refrigerator surrounding the opening therein closed by the door. Such gaskets normally are not completely sealingly effective unless sufficient compressive force is exerted thereon. Sometimes magnets do not exert sufficient attractive force on the door to achieve the necessary compression of such gaskets to attain the desired sealing effectiveness.